


Chicago

by RedRoseWhite



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst and Feels, Angst with a Happy Ending, Army buddies, Childhood Friends, Childhood Sweethearts, Death, Discussion of Abortion, F/M, Genderswap, Genderswapped Hux, Judaism, No Kids - Freeform, Reylo Jukebox Exchange, Road Trip, Shoutout to my Reylos, Soft Ben Solo, brief mention of pregnancy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-21
Updated: 2020-06-21
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:54:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24719368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedRoseWhite/pseuds/RedRoseWhite
Summary: Ben and his fellow airman Aimée Hux leave Chicago in a 2004 Chevy Astro  to dip one foot back into his old life in New York, and confront the broken past he left behind."The secret is knowing the moment when your present becomes your past and it’s time to stop living in it.”
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 16
Kudos: 23
Collections: Reylo Hidden Gems, Reylo Jukebox Exchange





	Chicago

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lotrtrash](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lotrtrash/gifts).



> [](https://ibb.co/DzMkHc1)   
> 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic will earn its rating in chapter 3, until then you'll have to settle for some angst, ok?

He hasn’t moved from lying like a toppled pillar on Covenants’ common-area sofa for twenty minutes, but Aimée has Google maps open and is ruthlessly buzzing with efficient plans.  
“Okay; if we leave tomorrow at oh-seven-hundred, we’ll get to New York about twelve hours later; let’s say fourteen to allow for breaks & toll lines. Do you want two three-hour driving shifts or one four-hour one?”

“I can... I can do three hours twice,” Ben says in a monotone.

His throat still feels thick from crying. He doesn’t want to move. Being reminded that he’s a person in the world, with a body, is so painful it hurts his teeth. The only reason he has a body is because his mother made one for him, and now she’s dead. Ben doesn’t know what is supposed to happen now that the gate he passed through to existence is closed forever; he’s just alone, there's no context anymore. Even his career, which she hated, he had in opposition to hers. It’s as though he’s untethered from his counterbalance, just floating and existing for his own sake and that suddenly doesn’t seem like a good enough reason to exist. He feels like the ache in his chest is infusing the sofa, like it will be haunted after he gets up and leaves.

There is a worm of self-loathing squirming in him because he’d been foolish, because he had answered the phone so hopefully, seeing Rey’s name on the display. She only calls once a year, on his October birthday, trying to prove that she’s mature and there are no hard feelings, because Rey’s so sweetly proper. Ben’s heart leapt when she stepped outside the pattern and called on this late-spring day, being spontaneous with him. But she hadn’t even asked him how he was, she’d choked out his name and the unbearable inescapable fact that his mom had died of an aneurysm in her sleep, and after Ben had wrenched the word “What” from his frozen mind they’d just sat on the phone and cried, sharing wallowing sobs as it became real to them both. At the seven-minute mark he’d found his breath and said; 

“I’m coming to New York. We’ll do this together,” and Rey had replied;

“Okay. Good. I’ll see you soon,” and hung up, because what else was there to say, and the promise of being together again felt like the best thing this phone call could bring. No point in going on.

Aimée is the one who decides they'll take a road trip in her brother’s 2004 Chevy Astro, and she is the one who approaches Director Pryde about her and Ben taking time off on short notice. Spending active duty doing Defense Support of Civil Authorities at O’Hare means they can both use vacation days like regular employees of Covenant. Ben is still crying in the men’s room down the hall when Pryde says gruffly to Aimée,  
“You come back Monday. Solo can have an extra week.” He’s looking at the photo on his desk of his own mother, holding hands between him and his bride on their wedding day, which might explain why he's so understanding. Today Ben is very glad that Aimée Hux is the way she is; to the point and purposeful, sailing through life like a crossbow bolt. She just gets it done.

They met doing a lot of labs together in tech school and one time they tried making out in the bathroom at the dive bar with great burgers near the base, but not even Aimée’s cute little nipple piercings, which Ben was surprisingly into, made it any good. They just fizzled out and put their shirts back on and had another Blue Moon each at the bar, sharing a basket of onion rings with more chemistry than when they’d shared tongues. When other airmen ask if they’re together, Ben ducks his head and smiles and lets Aimée take the lead.

“Fuck no, just friends,” she laughs, driving her pointer finger playfully into Ben’s expansive chest. “This towering oaf is not my type. If I wanted to fuck an unplugged refrigerator, I’d sneak into an Ashley Furniture after dark. Less crying afterwards too, right, Solo? He’s a real soggy cuddler.”

Even though she isn’t Jewish, Aimée starts observing shiva customs almost immediately.  
“I like rules,” she shrugs when Ben asks her about it, her carroty bangs whipping in the wind that’s whirling through the Joann’s Fabrics parking lot.  


“They’re comforting and they keep you from fucking up. Just tell me if that’s too tight.” The knot she’s tied in the new black ribbon around Ben’s arm is elegant, with perfect tension. He just stares at it for a moment, and Aimée puts a hand on his shoulder, reminds him what comes next.  


“Go home and start packing Ben, I’ll pick up the van and meet you at yours. Don’t try to cook, we’ll order in Thai, ok. I’ll pack to stay over, we can get up together, ensure an early start.”

“Yeah. Yeah, ok,” he murmurs.

In his mind he’s already packed, he can see the neat squares of black, white and blue tucked in his duffel. All of his uniforms will stay in his closet. He’ll have to remember to pack his own razor, there won’t be any at his mother’s house.

Four-thirty seems like a good time to open his eyes. If he were alone he’d be into his usual sets of push-ups and crunches but Hux is still asleep on the side of the bed he barely uses in her Hello Kitty-print romper, and Ben wants to preserve an atmosphere of peace in his room, for her sake. She isn’t even snoring, because she never does unless she’s hungover, so all is quiet. With nothing to distract him from the scent of a woman’s hair and creeping light in a small apartment and the thought of Rey waiting for him in his old city, Ben remembers coming back from Basic Training to a different bed in New York. He was a whole ten hours early, because he’d treated himself to a red-eye plane ticket home without telling anyone. He thinks back to finding Rey there, not beaming and kissing him and wrapping arms and legs like a kraken taking possession of a submarine, but sobbing and afraid.

Later, he realized that the chill he’d felt at the time wasn’t from his own fear; it was flowing from her, he’d caught icy puffs of it before, when she’d talk about her childhood and all the people who had left her and turned their foster system-stamped backs. He tried to help by pulling her into a hug but she scrambled backwards as if his hand would blister her skin, not able to make any sounds besides tearful gasps, and something whacked him very hard on his left shoulder, plastic that stung his collarbone. Ben picked up and peered at the white thing she’d thrown at him, which was heavier than its size would suggest. It was a pregnancy test, a stick with a red cross. Oh, no. They’d fucked up. The one time he’d pulled out instead of using a condom, because the next day was the plane to Basic Training and they’d all done shots, even Rose, and at the time it hadn’t seemed like too much to ask from the world. They couldn’t even steal that trivial moment of togetherness, skin on skin. It felt like a sign that the wedge of the universe was always going to have them split apart, somehow.

Once she saw that he understood and she wouldn’t have to say the words, Rey’s crying became less frantic. The room got quieter. He shucked off his Adidas and settled a little closer to her on the bed, and she let him, but kept staring out the window at December’s late lazy sunrise, breaking over the Hudson. Sniffling and using the topsheet to wipe her nose.

“I’ll need money to fix it,” was the first thing she said, voice heavy and wet.  
“I just paid my tuition and bought books, and my student health plan hasn’t kicked in yet, not until January. I had to age out of being a ward, plus there’s a grace period.” Her fingers wound over and under the corner of the sheet.

“I’ll pay for everything,” Ben reassured her. He inched a touch towards her arm. She flinched, but let him grasp her gently, above her elbow, below the sleeve of her t-shirt.  
“I have some of Dad’s life insurance money still, and I won’t need to pay rent on base.”  
Rey’s expression when she finally turned to him made Ben feel the way he had when he’d finished the BEAST course three weeks ago at basic, like he knew everything about his own world and absolutely nothing about anything else.

“I know your mother cut you off in protest of you enlisting, Ben, that’s all you have.”  
His jaw shifted and set in a way that he knew reminded everyone of his father.

“It’s fine. In a couple of weeks tech school will start. I’ll be back on base. I won’t need much. You need it more.”

“We need this,” Rey corrected him. “I’m doing this for all of us. It has to stop somewhere,” she stared so hard at one corner of the room Ben half-expected to see a presence there.

“My life has to start somewhere, too. I’m gonna be a university grad. I’m not fucking up my path.”

“I’m - I’m sorry, Rey,” he murmured into the silence that followed. She finally leaned back on him, let him put his arms around her, nestled in with the familiarity that two years of dating could bring. He felt her lips brush lightly on the curl of his hand, the back of his thumb.

“If there was ever going to be a baby,” she said in a low voice, “Ben Solo, it would be yours.”  
It’s the closest she got to saying ‘I love you’, and after that he never saw her cry again.

He barely saw her at all after that, the freezing out had begun. He was put in the category of “People and things that complicated Rey’s life”, and then he was on base, year one of tech school, and she called less and less, and soon Ben felt free to make out with Aimée in a burger bar bathroom. Rey’s birthday came and went in August with no acknowledgement and so did his that year and then December passed, without any commemoration at all. Eventually he stopped replaying every day what she’d said about the baby, the tone of her voice and the sigh at the end. It was stupid. They were just kids.

The air on the street has that feeling of mellowing slow, of sharp and cold now with a promise of warming up later. Ben and Aimée stack their bags and a cooler of snacks in the back of the van with a neatess and precision typical of airmen. When Ben gestures questioningly to the four black plastic milk crates and two blue Rubbermaid bins stacked along one side, all empty, Aimée tells him;

“Oh I thought you’d need a way to bring things back with you, from your mom’s house.”

He can’t imagine wanting so many heirlooms, or even his mom owning that many to pass along, because she lived a life that was populated with words and thoughts and actions, not things. Even her field of study was ancient texts and literature, the imprint of people who didn’t exist anymore and had left no trace save their written words and dust. But even when Aimée gets things factually wrong, she's often still right somehow, so he gives the empty vessels a nod before closing the back of the van.  
It’s so close to June that the sunrise is early and even though they haven’t dawdled, it’s half-done by the time they’re sailing on I-90. There’s no way to put the van’s sunshade at an angle that will keep the morning light from piercing Ben’s eyes, and he forgot his sunglasses, which means he’ll have to wear Aimée’s during his driving shifts.

“I’m going to take a photo of you in heart-shaped sunglasses and post it on Insta. It’ll go viral; Shrek road-tripping in porn star sunnies,” she tells him once they pull out of the drive-thru with their breakfast. Thank god she is so irreverent or he’d spend this whole drive sunk chest-deep in brooding sorrow.

“Fuck off, Hux,” he rumbles. “Your Instagram is private and also boring as fuck, nothing on there is going viral.”

“Shut up and eat your breakfast burrito, Shrek,” she says merrily and takes a bite of her own with the hand that is driving more casually. She tosses a packet of salsa haphazardly in his general direction and it pelts his chest, falls into his lap.

“Here, spice it up, or whatever you have to do,” her voice half-muffled with chewing.

Ben just sits there, a warm breakfast burrito in one hand and hot black coffee in the other, grief hovering at the edge of his mind like a halo of clouds around the moon, and lets the salsa fall wherever it may.

The halfway point is just south of Cleveland. Ben parks next to the Skyline's where the drive-thru line is lunchtime-long and ambles out of the driver's seat, crossing his arms over his chest to stretch. Aimée is trying to wrestle the seat back into a position where she can actually reach the pedals. He feels happier after his shift, he likes driving; it’s relaxing to be in motion, with full focus on the present alone. The feeling is almost enough like flying, which Ben likes best of all. The first time Luke took him up in the Cessna, he knew. He had to spend as much of his life flying, about to fly, just having flown, as he possibly could.

“Don’t forget to adjust the mirrors too,” Ben interjects with a note of amusement.

“You! And your giant fucking ogre-body!” Aimée pretend-yells with her face almost wedged into the space under the seat, hefting the levers. Once they’re driving again, she says, “What kind of genes do you have, anyway? Like, how does Shrek become Shrek?”

This part of the highway is cooler than where they began, so Ben rolls up his window.

“I don’t know. My mom’s very short and my dad was over six feet. I’m told my grandfather was tall too.”

She peers at him over her sunglasses then looks back at the uneventful I-90, now wrapped in the sunny emerald embrace of Cuyahoga National Park.

“Just ‘tall’? Not also ‘broad, like a mighty redwood’?”

Ben shrugs.

“People use a few words to describe him, ‘powerful’ and ‘imposing’ were two. Maybe I’m like him, but I’ll never know how much. He died before I was born and we didn’t have pictures. Mom said there was a fire.” Ben frowns, lightly taps his fingertip on the switch that controls the window.  
“Her childhood was… complicated. I think she thought of me and dad as her chance to build something all new and pretend the past didn’t matter anymore.”

“Did it matter though?” Hux asks. Ben takes a moment to think, answers in his own time.

“I don’t see how it couldn’t. It’s how we get to the present, isn’t it? By living through what was, being shaped by it? The secret is knowing the moment when your present becomes your past and it’s time to stop living in it.”

They’re on a causeway, driving through a marsh, and when Ben looks up as he speaks, he sees one bright blue tree-swallow, perching on a wire.

“Hm,” Aimée hums, pensive and melodic. Shadows of leaves wreath her forehead as they drive through the park.  
“That sounds like some Dr. Phil shit or whatever. I’m going to put on music, you want Lizzo or CRJ?”

Taking the Holland tunnel feels like tearing the veil between the life Ben built in Chicago and his past. It’s late enough in the evening that traffic isn’t hellish on 4th avenue, and he navigates smoothly along the length of the Manhattan bridge while Aimée gazes at all of the lights that float like stars on and around it. He takes Nostrand to avenue D then turns up East 31st street and prays that his mom has kept up the arrangement with Birdie to lease her extra parking spot, because he has a bad feeling about trying to find a free space on a residential street in Flatbush. It’s too late to ring Birdie’s doorbell and ask, but the spot is empty, so Ben takes it. When he climbs out of the van, a forest green Prius is just sitting there, hunkering in the dark street, behind them. They stand side by side and haul their duffels out of the back, then Ben turns and puts his hands in his pockets and looks at it for a little too long, and Hux murmurs; 

“That’s your mom’s car.”

“Yeah,” Ben sighs, then gestures to the short set of stairs that leads to a porch just to their right.  
“Come on, it’s this blue door, here.” Most of the lights are off, except one lamp in the sitting room. He can see a familiar pinkish glow in the bay window, and illuminating the front hall is muted golden light from the chandelier further back, above the table in the dining room. All of the upstairs windows are dark. Aimée darts ahead of Ben, jostling him with her bag, and rings the doorbell. 

It isn’t Rey who answers the door. It’s Finn, and a supernatural wave of relief comes crashing when he just steps to Ben and they spontaneously share a long, tight hug. He feels the other man’s warm watery heartbeat near his armpit. Ben clenches his eyes against the crystal refraction of light coming down the hall at his face and thinks to himself: Death transforms everything. Its touch moves and crumbles every stone. Then Finn gives way, and Ben steps back into his childhood home for the first time since he headed to Basic Training four years ago. He’d left his mother sobbing there into her hands under the chandelier, over a betrayal that had been coming all along. It was the last time he ever heard the sound of her voice.

“She’s next door - you know, in her old room at Birdie’s.” Finn says. “The last kid moved out in September and Birdie retired from fostering.”

Ben has an insane thought of rappelling up to Rey’s window and sneaking in and just being with her. The two kids his mom loved the most, mourning her together. It feels galling that Rey is so close, but he can’t see her. He realizes that everyone is looking at him, including Rose, who has appeared from somewhere in the sitting room.

“I’m going to sleep on the couch,” he announces. “Aimée, you’ll take the guest room upstairs. Oh everyone, this is Aimée.” 

Rose’s welcoming smile disperses the fog of Ben’s awkwardness. He knows he can barely be a person right now, he blew all of his fuel coming here from so far and making a hundred attempts at turning to face the fact that he will never speak to his mom again. Maybe he really is an ogre. He remembers child-Ben’s Word Of The Day flashcards, and “Epiphany” means a gathering of spirits. The spirits are here right now, all around, telling him that this is what real life is like, no one can just break things and expect to have all the time in the world to fix them. He is a man now, and men come face to face with consequences. The urge to cry is strong, but Ben won’t cry in front of these people, so he just stands very still in the darkened corridor, next to the shape of his duffel. Aimée smooths things over in her artlessly breezy way and places his bag in the sitting room next to the couch and waves a polite goodnight to Finn and Rose, who wait on the porch for the Uber back to their place.

“Ben, you need a shower, and some sleep.” she tells him, rubbing her hands together. “I’ll get this place ready for shiva right now if you promise not to wake me tomorrow before ten. I’m tired too.”

Aimée googles an FAQ page about shiva, then she prepares the house methodically and without fail. She covers the mirrors with tablecloths, places an enamel basin and the wedding-china pitcher next to the front door, with a roll of paper towel and a bucket for a bin. Ben sees it all there when he comes downstairs from his shower in boxers and a clean t-shirt. At first he is confused about why the front door is open, then Aimée comes back, carrying the milk crates from the van. She weaves around him without comment and places them bottom side up around the sitting room, with one near the dining table, putting a throw pillow on top of each. Low stools, of course, Ben would have forgotten. He settles on the couch under a light afghan that had been a gift from Amilyn sometime during his high school years, and if Aimée is moving around the house after that, he doesn’t even hear.

It isn’t four-thirty this time. It’s six-ish, and the sun is shining on his face and someone has their hand resting lightly on his, nudging fingertips to curl into his palm and he doesn’t even need to open his eyes to know that it’s Rey. The size of her hand is the same as it was when he left and so is the smell of her clothes and her hair. She’s already crying, her fingers are digging in now as she sees him wake, squeezing, and he’s fourteen again and he knows everything and they just barely need words to speak to each other.

“You found her,” he whispers, and Rey just nods, her mouth twists like a washcloth wringing and it does something to his heart. His resolve turns to powder and his eyes water fiercely. She sees it and rocks to press her forehead to his. Their tears mingle on his cheeks and across his nose.

“Ben,” she whispers back, her breath smelling like toothpaste, “I hate all of this.” 

Something stops him from simply saying ‘I do too’, because he hasn’t found any hate here yet; just love, but that is something to grieve over, too. The pressure from her forehead eases as she rocks back, and Ben follows the movement to sit up on the couch, with the blanket tangled around his legs and toes.

His mind is still rising to meet the day, but his body is already awake; he and Rey reach for each other and he gathers her into his lap as she moves to get closer. The hem of her t-shirt hikes up and Ben’s hand slips across the bare small of her back, every tiny hair on his knuckles and her skin, illuminated by the morning sun.

“Together,” he repeats, because Ben knows her, and he wants to promise the thing that will help her to hate things less. “We’ll do this together,” with a crack at the end. His arms wrap tightly around her, like he’s holding a Torah scroll, and they finish what they began on the long-distance call, sobbing as one. Rey’s cheek on his chest and his on the top of her head.

When she kisses him, her mouth tastes like salt and mint, and Ben’s just tastes like salt.

**Author's Note:**

> This would not have been possible without the invaluable input, encouragement and appreciation of my hard-working betas  
> [Denzer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Denzer) and [free_smarcher](https://archiveofourown.org/users/free_smarcher). May all your breakfast burritos be delicious.  
> And of course, thank you to the organizer of the exchange, [reylogarbagechute](https://archiveofourown.org/users/reylogarbagechute) you're the real MVP.


End file.
